Yes, it’s me again, nattering on about the cold, cold, horribly cold winter we’re having here in Minnesota—and a lot of other places too, I know. But, honestly, most of you in other states will be warm again far sooner than we will here in the tundra. So I feel entitled to go on about this a bit more and if you don’t agree, please don’t send me another email telling me that if I don’t love it in Minnesota, I should move. Move where? In with you? Awesome!

At least the fern frost continues to put on a show on the bathroom window.

Anyway, as I was saying, a local meteorologist wrote the other day that Minnesotans are experiencing the coldest winter in 33 years. I didn’t live here then, but I believe him. Minnesotans are tough, but it’s been far below zero with mind-boggling wind chills for a long time now. Kids are bored at home because schools have been closed repeatedly. Parents are using up precious vacation days staying home with bored kids. And bored dogs wish they could go outside, but they can’t stand how cold their paws get, even with those awful booties that they hate.

We are a stir-crazy lot, motivated to do little more than lie on the couch and drink and order takeout while watching movie after movie. Or is that just me? BTW, I would highly recommend Seven Psychopaths and The Heat, but I thought Iron Man 3 was kind of meh even though I loved the first two.

What does this have to do with gardening? you wonder. Well, in an effort to stop spending so much time eating, drinking and watching movies, I recently tried focusing on spring to brighten my mood and, by golly, it worked! In addition to looking at a bunch of the garden-related photos I took last season, I also spent a few hours going through all of the seed and plant catalogs that have piled up on my living room coffee table. That was fun, especially because our sweet dog, Lily, helped by napping on me the whole time.

Lily doesn’t much care that she’s making it hard for me to take notes on the vegetable seeds that I want to order for next year.

So if you’re bored and freezing and in need of some good cheer, I’ve posted a few photos below in the hope that they help a bit. And if you haven’t already started looking at your seed and plant catalogs, give it a go. I bet it will make you feel better to start thinking about what you’ll plant in just a few weeks or months, depending on where your live. I especially love Renee’s Garden, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (their catalog is a work of art—just ignore the religious quotes that pop up now and then), Seed Savers Exchange, Fedco Seeds, Prairie Moon Nursery and Territorial Seed Company.

Our friend Kendall makes these lovely succulent frames to hang on her patio in San Francisco.

Well, here we are in the middle of January and what is normally an unspeakably cold month is worse this week due to what meteorologists are calling a “distorted polar vortex,” which has allowed Arctic air to spill all the way down to Florida. With air temperatures around -20°F plus wind chill making it feel like -50°F yesterday, I’ve had a few people email to ask whether our perennials here in Minnesota will survive.

Fern frost on the window in our bathroom.

I’ll give the answer I often give for any garden-related question: It depends. It helps that we have snow cover to keep soil temperatures from fluctuating a lot. And perennials rated for our Zone 4 climate should be okay down to an air temperature of -30°F (wind chill doesn’t matter). But if you put things in the ground late, as I did last year, they may not make it since they didn’t have much time to establish a decent root system. And if you didn’t water much, plants may be too drought stressed to survive.

It’s also hard to say how newer introductions will do. With so many new plants being rushed to market each year, plant trials aren’t as rigorous as they used to be. It’s possible that some of the perennials we’ve tried lately won’t be able to hack the extreme cold. And with that in mind, here is a short review of some of the new introductions I’ve tried in my gardens in the last few years. Of course, this is just my experience. Perhaps other gardeners are growing things that I’ve killed just fine. (If that’s you, please email and tell me your secrets.) And one other thing to note—I test plants in my garden for Proven Winners so there are a lot of plants from them on this list.

Oso Happy Smoothie RoseCourtesy of Proven Winners

Rosa Oso Happy Smoothie‘Zlesak Poly3’ PPAF

I can’t say enough great things about this rose. Bred by David Zlesak, a hort professor at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Oso Happy Smoothie has been in one of my backyard gardens for a couple of seasons now. As promised, it is a little over 3 feet tall, it was covered with dainty pink blooms all summer, has great form, no thorns and recovered nicely from being chomped on by rabbits last winter.

‘Midnight Marve’ HibiscusCourtesy of Walters Gardens

Hibiscus ‘Midnight Marvel’

My friend, Kathleen, bought this new hibiscus from Walters Gardens for each of us this summer and, so far, it has performed beautifully in both of our gardens—hers more than mine, though. ‘Midnight Marvel‘ didn’t yet reach its purported 48 inches tall, but it may next season, and the burgundy foliage topped with red blooms make the plant absolutely stunning.

Grafted tomatoes, especially heirlooms, were really hot this year. Why graft heirlooms? Well, the reasoning is that by grafting the heirlooms we love—Brandywines, Green Zebras, Cherokee Purples, Mortgage Lifters—to a rootstock that’s got, say, great drought tolerance or disease resistance, you get what amounts to a super heirloom.

Tomato grafting in progress.Credit: Washington State University

The strategy isn’t new. Apple and grape varieties have been produced successfully on desirable rootstock for ages. But this is the first time that home gardeners in the U.S. are really starting to see grafted vegetables, including eggplants, peppers, cucumbers and watermelon, becoming increasingly available at the retail level. Territorial Seed Company, Johnny’s Selected Seeds and White Flower Farm are just a few of the places where you’ll find grafted vegetables.

Though I admit that there can be problems with heirlooms tomatoes, I go out of my way to plant them. So I like the idea of making them more viable and widely available. Like a lot of gardeners, I feel strongly about the importance of including heirlooms of all types in the garden and, on the whole, I think heirloom tomatoes taste better than their hybrid peers, which often have tough skins and bland flavor. (Some of my favorite heirlooms are Black Krim, Green Zebra, Stupice and Sweet Million, though I always, always, always plant Sungolds, those out-of-this-world hybrid, yellow cherry tomatoes.)

Indigo Rose tomatoes were gorgeous, but didn’t taste like much.

More Indigo Rose porn.

Still, I’m always up for trying something new. So I was happy to get a surprise box of grafted tomato seedling samples (some heirlooms, some not) from Mighty ‘Mato early in the season. Having a limited amount of sun to work with, I kept two for myself, an Indigo Rose and a Brandywine, and gave the others to master gardener friends to plant and report back on. During the season, I also talked with more MGs and garden writers who were experimenting with grafted tomatoes. The outcome? Impressions were mixed.

Take Indigo Rose, for example. I had been wanting to try Indigo Rose, which was introduced by Oregon State University in 2012. Their goal was to produce a tomato with high levels of antioxidants. I wanted to grow the tomato because I fell for the weird looking purple-black fruit. I planted both grafted and ungrafted Indigo Rose tomatoes so I could compare the two (and so I could justify planting way too many tomatoes, like I always do).

Sadly, though they both produced an absurd amount of fruit all summer long, I didn’t like either of them, mainly because the tomatoes took FOREVER to ripen and when they finally did, they tasted bland and watery. Also of note was the fact that I honestly noticed no difference between the grafted plants and the ungrafted plants. Most of the gardeners I’ve talked to had similar experiences with Indigo Rose, though I will say that a few thought they were tastier than I did.

Grafted Indigo Ruby tomatoes got rave reviews from gardeners.

On the plus side, my friend, Deb, loved Mighty ‘Mato’s grafted Indigo Ruby, a cross between Indigo Rose and a cherry tomato. The plant grew well, was free of disease and produced very tasty tomatoes all season. I heard rave reviews from other gardeners, too, though I don’t know how they compared to ungrafted Indigo Ruby.

As for grafted Brandywine tomatoes, by all accounts, including mine, the grafted plants didn’t do as well as the heirlooms usually do on their own. I did hear lots of good things about grafted Legend tomatoes—great taste, good disease resistance and a LOT of tomatoes.

What does all of this mean? Well, at this point, I’m not ready to say that grafted tomatoes aren’t worth the price, which is steep compared to regular tomatoes, hybrids and heirlooms. But I’m not ready to sing their praises either. I’ll plant a couple more varieties next summer and report back on how things go. If you try grafted tomatoes, please let me know about your experiences. I’ll pass that information on so we can all compare notes.

Some of you might remember a post I wrote last year about the ethics of taking seeds from other people’s gardens. Sure, it’s hard to resist pinching a few seeds off of other people’s plants when you see something you just love and figure “they’ve got plenty to share, right?” But is that really okay? Is it stealing? What if they don’t want to share?

Haunted by these questions after reading a blog post about a gardener who got chased and yelled at by an angry homeowner after taking a few seeds that had fallen on the SIDEWALK, I decided to try hard not to take seeds without asking. (I just can’t say never, but mostly never I can do.) Anyway, I also decided to figure out a way to share seeds with other gardeners, and I’m happy to say that the Little Free Seed Bank I dreamed of has been up and running for over a month. Here it is!

This summer, my husband Mike and I installed one of those Little Free Library boxes on our boulevard. If you haven’t heard of these libraries, they’re popping up all over the country and they’re a great way to share books with neighbors. Our library has been busy ever since we put it up with people of all ages stopping by to take a book or leave a book.

Our great neighbors, Judy and Doug, made this awesome sign for the seed library.

While both shelves will normally be for books, we’ve reserved the top shelf of our library for seed sharing during the spring and fall. So far, available seeds include: angelica, black-eyed Susan, anise hyssop, zinnias, cleome, ‘Painted Lady’ heirloom sweet peas (love these), garlic chives and blue delphinium. Individual seed types are packaged in large envelopes and gardeners can put the seeds they would like into small coin envelopes or little plastic bags that were donated by a kind neighbor. Pencils are also on the shelf so people can label the envelopes before they forget what’s inside—I know I would. (Those who take the plastic bags will need to have good memories.)

Lots of gardeners have stopped by to take seeds in the last few weeks. I’m hoping interest in the Little Seed Bank will grow over time and soon we’ll have more seeds to share than we know what to do with. If you live in town and would like to drop off or pick up some seeds, email me (meleah at everydaygardener.com) and I’ll give you directions. The more the merrier!

As a garden writer, I read a lot of gardening blogs and articles by other writers and landscape designers and I have to say, I’m finding them increasingly annoying and depressing. So much judgment and negativity—who died and made us the arbiters of all things right and tasteful?

When I’ve finished sipping tea from my golden cup, I shall tell you all what to plant in your gardens.

Without naming the writer and being a jerk when I’m trying to write about why it’s important to not be a jerk, let me just say that recently I read a blog post that pushed me over the edge. It was a short piece, posted by a writer who had a day off so she rented a bike in a nearby town and peddled around looking at gardens.

It was a beautiful blue-sky day, but she really couldn’t enjoy it because most of the homes she biked past were landscaped with predictable perennials, particularly KnockOut® roses and catmint (Nepeta). The fact that most of the roses were RED only accentuated the humdrum nature of the plants in her mind, and she posted a few pictures to bolster her point with “sophisticated” readers like us. Ugh. How can this sort of thing be helpful to anyone?

What’s so bad about KnockOut roses, anyway?

Sure, experienced gardeners or those with the good fortune to have an impermeable force field of self-esteem might read snobby comments like that and think: “To hell with her, I love my KnockOut roses.” But for many mortals trying to garden, it’s no fun to read something written by someone who is supposedly in the know that basically says you have bad taste if you plant certain things (or allow them to be planted by a landscaper) and you ought to know better. This kind of senseless garden bullying isn’t helpful or inspiring and needs to stop.

A Matter of Taste

I will confess right now that I am guilty of garden snobbery. I have written disparaging things about annual geraniums, dusty miller and other plants I don’t like. Thinking about it now, I can’t imagine how I ever thought that might be useful to anyone. Please accept my sincere apology for behaving like such a self-important turd.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that garden writers should only write nice things about plants. On the contrary, plants that perform poorly are absolutely fair game. It’s our job to spill the beans on crappy plants that don’t bloom well, fail to be as hardy as advertised or are riddled with diseases they’re supposed to be able to resist. And there’s nothing wrong with pointing out that certain plants are being used an awful lot and suggesting alternatives. That’s information that people can use. But slamming plants based on personal preference, or nattering on about how sophisticated gardeners would never have this or that “over-planted” plant in their gardens, is on par with shaming high school classmates over their choice of jeans.

I like our crowded gardens, but not this weird lens filter that makes the world look as if we’ve smeared Vaseline on everything. Gross.

Let’s face it. Whether you’re a professional or a novice, when it comes right down to it, plant picks and gardening styles are always about personal taste. Like most gardeners, I plant what I like, and what is given to me and what I find by the side of the road with a “Free” sign on it. I know and respect many local landscape designers, and I do follow some of their advice, but I don’t want to hire one of them to reimagine my yard for me. Then, I would be living with their taste, not mine. I like the crowded, overgrown gardens I have imagined for myself and I ignore the finger-waggers who question my taste level. You should too.

A slightly different version of this post appeared recently in Northern Gardener magazine.

Hi. My name is Meleah Maynard and I garden in crazy-ass cold, zone 4 Minneapolis, Minnesota. My first book, co-authored with Jeff Gillman, Decoding Gardening Advice: The Science Behind the 100 Most Common Recommendations, was recently published by Timber Press. Click here to email Meleah.